


Sideways in Time

by deepandlovelydark



Series: Second Chances [34]
Category: MacGyver (TV 1985)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Misunderstandings, Shameless Self-Indulgence, Small Towns, Violence, happy endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-09
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deepandlovelydark/pseuds/deepandlovelydark
Summary: Some stories are just easier to tell in reverse.





	1. Four Times Things Could Have Gone Better (And One Time They're Even Worse)

_i. 1969_

"Look, you don't really want to marry Mac," Mike says to Ellen. "Jack's been stuck on him ever since he showed up, you know that. One lost Texan kid, following around the only person who wouldn't make fun of his accent, or his weight or that weird eye-twitch he has, it makes some kind of sense. And it doesn't just go one way. You know how Mac disappeared for a while, after killing Jesse?"

"That was awful," Ellen agrees, panting a little as she tries to keep up with Mike's strong paddle stroke (why does she let Mike talk her into these things?) "He spent a whole month in a sickbed or something, didn't he?"

"Wasn't really that romantic. He taught himself enough chemistry to make a still and got way drunk. So his mother grounded him, and lectured him about it, along with probably half the adults in town. None of them were doing him any good- I mean, they told him to never do it again or even think about it, and you just can't say things like that to Mac. I wasn't supposed to know any of this," she adds, splattering Ellen with a spray of river water. "Had to do some eavesdropping. Well, he'd probably be dead now if it wasn't for Jack."

"What'd he do?"

"Got him drunk," Mike says solemnly. "Who knows where he got the liquor, but then, we're talking about Jack Dalton. Maybe he brought it with him from Texas. Point is, I'm sure the only reason Mac survived half a summer of platitudes and speeches and hellfire warnings and whatever is because Jack was sneaking him top-shelf bourbon every night to take the edge off, till school started and she had to let him out of the house again. Ellen, you can't compete with a bond like that. They'd go through anything for each other." She stows her paddle and lets the canoe start drifting, much to Ellen's tired relief. "Funny how everybody was a lot more mad about the drinking than the murder. Even if it wasn't Mac's fault."

"Okay," Ellen agrees. "So I'll have to share him, but I can live with that. If he loves me just a little, that'll be enough."

"Forget about enough. What about everything, instead?"

There's a romantic sort of quaver in her voice, now. Ellen can guess where this is going- Mike's very predictable that way. Always longing after the moon, or at least everything she can find down here on earth. 

"You don't like Mission City that much, not when it's all wrapped up with your dad and everything. Mac can be a bore and stay put if he wants to, but why should you? C'mon with me instead. My motorbike carries two."

"Lots of reasons! I mean, I'm wearing his ring, and I do like it here, and- I don't know what I'd do in that big wide world you're so enthusiastic about. I don't even like people that much."

"Then you are going to be one miserable little lady, having to serve coffee with a smile all day long," Mike points out. "Look...I wouldn't be asking just anybody. But- you know what it's like."

"What what's like?"

Mike makes a sound as close to defeat as she's capable of. "To want Mac like anything and know you can't have him. Ellen, we need to get over him. Bad. And I can't think of a better way to do it than a nice, crazy long road trip with adventuring, and getting into trouble, and meeting a lot of cute boys who aren't named Angus MacGyver. It's a great plan. Trust me."

"I don't know about all this," Ellen says, very dubiously. 

But she and Mike are out of Mission City, the week before the wedding (not the day before. That'd be gauche.)

Fortunately, Jack is around to console his thoroughly bewildered boyfriend. 

*******************

_ii. 1982_

If he'd known how much trouble this boat impeller was going to be, he'd never have invented the damn thing. 

"I can't come to bed yet, I'm busy," Mac says to Ellen. "There's still another hundred pages of this legalese for me to finish reading, I promised Newberry I'd at least have a look before tomorrow. Not that I have a clue what any of it means..."

"Damn this lawsuit, anyway. I want out."

He can't exactly blame her. "Would you believe we can't even afford a divorce right now? I've checked."

"I don't mean it like that." 

Abruptly, she shoves all his paperwork off the counter, in one hard movement that sends hundreds of pages walloping across the cafe. A few white sheets flutter down from the ceiling in the aftermath, last finishing touch to the utterly disorganised mess. 

"Ellen, what the hell!"

He stumbles off his chair, starts trying to gather the documents into some kind of order. "What is the matter with you! I've got to get all this done!"

She rips them right out of his hands again, but her voice is soft. "Mac. Mac, honey, look at me."

Almost sobbing, he does. 

There's a spark in her eyes, a fixity of purpose, that he doesn't recall seeing on his wife's face in over a decade of marriage. Or before it. "We can't go on like this. It was all right before your mother died, with her love to smooth things over, and three of us to work the counter, but this is just driving both of us insane. And we can't afford it, anyway."

"Nothing's insurmountable. If I found a second job, or if you did, or we get a mortgage on the cafe or something-"

"We could do all that," Ellen says. "Or we could not."

"What else is there?"

"Forget about all this!" She waves dismissively at the neat tables, cute little doilies and her watercolours and the knickknacks. "Forget Mission City. Let the bills pile up, let this place rot, we'll take what cash we've got and run for it. You've got your knack for improvising, I've taken my share of bush trips, we can start hiking north and disappear. They can't serve us court writs if they can't find us."

It's the same thought he's been playing with all year; and he's surprised that they're still that much in tandem. 

Though he'd never imagined it as a team project. "You wouldn't do that. Not with me, you haven't loved me for years."

"I think you did something unforgivable to this town," Ellen says. "I think that if any of them found out, I'd never be able to look them in the face again. But you know what? I don't want to. I've spent years smiling at people, taking whatever kind of abuse or tragedy or boredom they throw at me. I've had enough customers for one lifetime. More than enough." 

"And the way they stare at you when you take a moment too long counting out the change," Mac says suddenly. 

"And when Penny Parker falls through the doorway, and everybody gives a groan because they know she's going to babble on until doomsday."

He's starting to laugh now. "God help us if we ever mix up the drinks, either."

"Expecting you to know all their names! I can't stand the names. Names are horrible."

"They've sure caused us a lot of trouble over the years...you, and my mom, and I hate being called Mac. Always did."

"If we go somewhere it's just us two," Ellen murmurs, "we won't need any names."

The same familiar, half-forgotten desire, but spiced and leavened by her new-found assertion, a partner instead of a broken flower. He takes her in his arms, almost kisses her. 

Then- "No. Not yet. Tomorrow night, when we're a hundred miles away and we've set up camp. Under the stars somewhere."

"And tonight," Ellen says, breaking away in perfect understanding, "we start packing."

*******************

_iii. 1986_

_Long and short of it is, I need a loan. Only until Allison's estate is settled, honestly._

"You could have just said so," Jack says, passing the letter back to Mac through the prison window. "What else are friends for?"

"I feel like an idiot asking," Mac says, not a little sheepish. "And I'd have understood if you'd said no. The way I was acting, last time I saw you..."

"Forget it," Jack says airily. (He's too besotted to be unforgiving; or maybe that's the illicit flask of liquor that Mac's passed him, but either way.) "Seriously, I'm just glad you came back."

"Well...it was either ask you or sell the jeep. And Becky practically ordered me."

"Becky? I knew that she had her uncle's measure, but isn't that taking it a bit far?"

"She just wouldn't let a simple thing go," Mac says thoughtfully. "Chatting about my fishing trips with one of the customers, and our busybody said, oh, isn't it nice he's quit that silly vegetarian kick. And that got her all worried for some reason...she's pretty sensitive, sometimes. Didn't like that I'd suddenly changed up my habits and started gutting fish as soon as she showed up...we had a long talk over dinner last night, and she pried at me until I had to tell her just how bad things really are. You know, she took it like a trooper? Determined to help out by working at the shop, that kind of thing. I don't like it much, but I guess she's talking sense."

"Wait, you're vegetarian? When did this happen?"

Mac gives him one of those Jack-Dalton-you're-a-prize-idiot looks. "Since the divorce, I told you that at least twice. Should I have said it on a Tuesday? Were you seriously too drunk to remember?"

"I kept buying you fried chicken!"

"I thought that you just wanted me drunk quicker, those nights," Mac says, going very red. "Or wanted me to make sure you didn't finish all the potato chips yourself."

"There has been a hell of a lot of miscommunication going on here," Jack mutters. "Me and you, and you not talking to Becky. And...wait, so for once, Mission City gossips are working on the side of good? Huh, there’s irony for you."

"Now that's a scary thought."

*******************

_iv. 1990_

"Well, of course it's a two-seater plane, but I'm not gonna tell Mac that," Jack slurs to Katie. "Mexican standoff. If Jacques doesn't make his move after all, I'll be there to pick up the pieces."

"I thought you liked Westerns. That isn't even close to the definition of a Mexican standoff," Katie says. "But it serves the man right! After all the dilly-dallying and nonsense he's put you through over the years!"

Something about her tone strikes a faint warning chord; Jack struggles to articulate it with what's left of his sobriety. "You say that like you want me to stay single."

"Best way to be," Katie says. "Comfortable and fancy-free."

"But..." Jack says, finding himself pushing the tequila away. "But I don't want to be single. Not really."

"Coulda fooled me. Actually, you did fool me. Then why aren't you doing something about it?"

"Oh, come on. I'm no kind of competition for theatre guy, and I know it.”

She favours him with a quizzical glance. "What’s that got to do with it? Just go run the same charming, overbearing scam you always do. Don't say anything about Jacques, don't give him a chance to say no, just tell Mac that he'd better pack his bags, because you're taking him and his niece on a one-way trip to California. Piece of cake."

So he tries it.

The three of them send her a very nice postcard from LA.

*******************

_v._

Murdoc does not remember quite how they arrived in the cargo hold of one appallingly small, loud, rackety plane; and the only consolation he can find is that law enforcement could not conceivably be subjecting themselves to these agonies.

Although law enforcement would have made a neater job of splinting his leg. "What is going on?"

"Getaway," Mac says, fixing up an impromptu safety harness for himself. "See if I trust your safehouses ever again. Either that or you were dumb enough to be knocked out by one of your own traps."

"What sort?"

"About fifteen sandbags dropping out of the ceiling?"

Murdoc considers. "Not one of mine."

"I kinda figured that. What with Pete Thornton showing up-"

"Pete Thornton? Have we been captured?"

"No! Sheesh, don't you trust me to do anything? Jack walloped him over the head with one of your guns. Busted it down the middle. The gun, I mean, not Thornton, he’s probably just got a sore head-" 

His vocabulary is entirely inadequate for today's rigours. "Not-"

"Dalton, yup! Your friendly neighbourhood pilot!" Jack says, peeking round the door with an infuriatingly chipper expression. 

"In that case, will you kindly get on with flying this wretched plane!"

"Just my luck. Two passengers who are afraid of heights."

"It isn’t the heights I take umbrage with!"

"Jack. Seriously. And Murdoc, calm down. I think we did pretty well, considering."

"Hardly. What are we supposed to do with him afterwards?"

"He saved your life," MacGyver says, shrugging. "And besides, how else was I supposed to get you out? With both Phoenix and HIT after us?"

"Both. Both?"

"Oh yeah, Nicholas was hanging around somewhere. Getting hot under the collar because the G-men kept shoving him out of the way."

"How'd he get that many organisations mad at him at once?" Jack calls. 

"These things happen when you're an assassin for hire!" MacGyver yells back. 

"To recapitulate," Murdoc says wearily. "There are three of us in this two-seater plane, every agency of the Great Game that I have enjoyed even minor interactions with is out for my blood, and my life was saved by your annoying taxi driver friend from Mission City."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"Did you at least manage to pick up any cash from my cache?"

"Nope."

"Oh, don't worry about money," Jack says. "I've got this smuggling mission all lined up, south of the border! San Marcos, here we come!"

"San Marcos is presently in the middle of a CIA-directed civil war. It is hardly a location I'd care to go myself, much less with you two amateurs."

"Oh, so that's what they want the guns for? I thought it was just, you know, private disagreements."

"And for how long am I going to be an amateur?" MacGyver demands. "Trust me, it wasn't any picnic getting you out of there in one piece."

"Let's put it this way," Murdoc says sourly. "Assuming that we survive the next three months or so of this, I will concede that you've passed that point."

Actually, he rather hopes that his protege’s passed it now. With him out of action, and their only asset a severely decrepit plane (and attached blithering pilot), it will undoubtedly take all of the man's skill, improvisational ability, and sheer dumb luck to get them out of this alive. 

"Now this is something like," MacGyver says happily. 

This had better work. 

(Though he has a curious impression that it will.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i. Mike goes in for new journalism; don't take her narration as holy writ, but don't wholly rule it out  
> ii. the Ellen who doesn't grit her teeth and throw herself into makeup and shopping for five years  
> iii. sometimes luck is just that, luck  
> iv. in real time, Jack had too many tequilas to hear what Katie was telling him  
> v. whoops!


	2. Saturday night forever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've been rewriting Second Chances in novel format. Most of these changes are cosmetic, but I ended up having to write an explanation for Mac and Jack's relationship that doesn't quite jib with what's going on at the end of "Movie Night". 
> 
> Now, I'm quite fond of the original version of "Movie Night", so that's staying put, but I also wanted to archive this version, here.

The videodisc system sits in Mac's workshop now, along with a dusty engine prototype and various other bric-a-brac from his broken dreams. He tells himself he's just too busy to go down there, these days. It's a comforting sort of lie.

One he needs to hear. He's starved for his niece, given up his beloved jeep and a good chunk of what's left of his self-respect, along with any chance of leaving with Jack, and now his sweet, stolen Tuesdays have gone too. Of course he'd do it all, just the same, but... Jack's taken him at his word, started drinking at the Wingman Bar again. Only fair, really.

Someday, his clever niece is going to get out of this town. Maybe to study for that chemistry degree he never had. He hopes she never looks back.

Though Mac's starting to think he'll just go crazy, when Becky leaves.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"Unc, could you start the popcorn popper?"

"Sure thing." It's a good cheap snack, fun and easy to spice in plenty of different ways. They make it pretty often.

So Mac doesn't catch on to what she's really up to, until he finishes and brings the hot bowl over to their sofa (with butter, not margarine- he could always tell the difference when Jack was making it). Finds her blowing dust off his movie collection.

"What'd you lug that back up here for?"

"Cos I wanted to watch a movie," Becky says. "What else?"

At least it isn't Tuesday.

The doorbell rings, faintly; Mac hurries down, wondering who'd be here this time of night. He closes the shop early on Saturdays, so he and Becky can have some relaxation for once in their lives.

A perishing November wind blows through the door. Along with- "Jack? Uh, hi."

"Wanna help me carry this?" Jack shoves a paper bag into his hands, filled with plastic utensils and soda (he's keeping a tight grip on the one with all the food in it.) "Becky called me. Said she fancied some Chinese food."

"Ah." It's one of Jack's odder duties as cab driver, driving out to pick up takeout from other towns (it's not worth anyone's else's time to deliver to Mission City; there just isn't enough call for anything besides pizza.) "Give me a minute, I'll raid the tip jar and pay you back."

"Lighten up, willya? You don't get to be the only person who does nice things for your niece. Unless you put some kind of moratorium on that, in which case, I'd have to say that was pretty dumb."

"It's not about doing her a favour. You're trying to do me one." Dammit, his pride might be in shreds but he's clinging on to what there is of it.

"So go lock yourself in your room and don't eat any. Becky and I are gonna-" Jack pauses, weighs his next sentence carefully. "Put one of your movies in the player, sit down on the sofa, and watch it. Actually, literally, watch a film. That all right by you?"

"If that's what she wants to do, sure."

Mac's rather tempted to go ahead with that hide-in-the-bedroom idea, but when they do finally get up the stairs, he has to put down the soda, and get some ice- and before he entirely knows what's happening, Becky's pulled him over to the sofa and Jack's jammed himself on the other end, so that he's stuck sandwiched between the two of them.

With a hot bowl of popcorn on his lap. While his mind's simultaneously racing and trying not to think about how awkward this is, the prospect of a cosy rest and some greasy takeout is sounding more and more attractive. Maybe he should just settle in and enjoy this.

"Who wants to pick?" Becky asks. "I'm having a little trouble deciding, honestly."

Mac endeavors not to look at Jack. "Not a Western."

"They're all Westerns," Jack says. "No, wait. You had one-"

"Sunset Boulevard!" Becky announces, pulling it out of the stack. "There we go."

Oh, great. A psychosexual film noir about people endlessly reliving their more optimistic past, that's not going to be unsettlingly close to home at all. (Sheesh, even Ellen's moved on.)

Still, at least it's one movie he and Jack never did get around to watching...

"Are you going to want to do this every Saturday?" he asks his niece.

"I think so," Becky says, comfortably snuggling up against him. "Hey, it'll be something for Jack to do besides get drunk alone in his trailer."

"What? When? I know you're a bit more than a social drinker-"

"But at least I've had the sense not to drink alone?" Jack shrugs. "It was Tuesday night, I was bored."

For the first time since Becky's arrival, Mac finds himself fretting about somebody besides her. "Please don't do that."

"Make me promise," Jack says, a glint in his eye.

"Okay," Mac says, flippant and careless. "Promise me you won't, okay? Only I guess I've got used to having you 'round."

"Done. Does that mean I'm invited next Saturday?" Jack asks quietly, as Becky pops the movie in.

"Let's see how this one goes, first."

And finally the movie's on, so thankfully that conversation comes to an end. Though it bothers him all the way through, that somehow his niece has heard a piece of gossip about Jack before he did.

Maybe he ought to have been paying more attention.

No. Of course he should have.

XXXXXXXXXXXX

"I see you stuck around for some of Unc's pancakes," Becky says, the next morning.

"He does 'em better than I do," Jack says lazily, watching a very content Mac flip another onto the syrup-soaked stack. "Fact is, he can cook just about anything better than me. Though I can make mediocre French toast, if you wanna-"

"Absolutely not!"

"He means, no thanks," Becky says politely. "Also, that he'd probably be just as happy if you never said 'French toast' to him ever again."

"Sheesh! I was only offering..."

XXXXXXXXXXXX

Of course, things aren't quite the same as before.

It takes Jack a while to realise, with a certain bemusement, that his Saturdays have ended up in a sort of domestic routine. Mac picks up a lot of movies that aren't Westerns for them to watch (though they eventually get around to those again, as Becky turns out to share her uncle's sincere taste for the genre). She's always round, wryly commenting on the films and fetching quilts and generally making the whole thing a lot more homey. Her knack for interesting flavours of popcorn is a change from his all-junk-food-all-the-time style, that's for sure.

Of course, he's still to be found at the Wingman Bar half the nights in the week, but- this kind of domestic adventure, he thinks he can live with. Because it isn't judgemental; it isn't like the rest of Mission City, trying to live up to a perfect innocuous photograph in an aspirational magazine. It's just the three of them, making a safe space for themselves against the odds. Having a damned good try at being happy, despite all the reasons they shouldn't be.

And it's so much easier for them to avoid suspicion this way. The takeout deliveries are self-explanatory (he firmly refuses to let Mac pay for them, ever), and he can sneak home the next day without anybody being the wiser.

After all. Sunday mornings, everybody else in Mission City is at church.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jack whump. Because apparently the ten thousand words of that in "Original Sin" just wasn't enough.
> 
> Anybody who looks at this and says "My goodness, you've replicated the storytelling structure of Gary Paulsen's 'Brian's Winter' versus 'Hatchet'" wins a special No-Prize.
> 
> (I dunno what. Ask me for a fic or something.)

"The difference between sanity and insanity," Jack says to Becky, "is whether or not you can tell the difference between the real thing and what you're just imagining. I know perfectly well you're not here."

"So what you're saying is, it's okay for you to talk to me because I don't actually exist? Jack, you're being silly."

She's sitting on a fresh-cut log, watching her uncle split wood with their new axe. Mac had put his foot down and insisted they spend their limited savings on some serious camping equipment, before autumn sets in- and amnesia or not, he's the one who knows how this is done. Jack had let him.  

"Look, I'm as chatty as the next guy- more so, when the next guy is his majesty of terseness over there- so I gotta talk to someone. And I've been writing to you all summer- who else am I gonna think about, Murdoc?"

"You could do that," Becky says. "Call him, apologise all you have to, but do what you need to so you can go home already. You know you miss it."

"Oh, don't you start. I made a committment to look after Mac." 

"It's brave," Becky says, dubiously. "But honestly, it's only worth doing if it'll work- and I'm not sure about that part. Otherwise you're just making yourself really miserable for no particular reason."

"I'll make it work. You watch."

**********

He doesn't. It's hard to keep track of time up here, with one day merging into the next and no particular order to events, and one week he forgets it's Saturday and doesn't give Mac his pill. And Mac (is it mistrust or forgetfulness?) doesn't take it.

Monday morning he's gone, with a note in his place. 

_I can't believe you. All those years- seriously, you could do this to me after all those years I spent trapped in Minnesota? Trying to take away everything I like about my life, even Becky- you know she'll have been wondering where I am for a whole week. How could you do that to her?_

"A week?" Jack says incredulously to Becky. "But I'm sure that the boot camp runs another fortnight- I mean, I was sure. Guess I'm not now. Not if I'm that confused...but I thought so, honestly I did."

And he'd explain as much to Mac, make the guy believe him. He's had plenty of practice in making his best friend see things his way, why he'd meant a particular course of action for the best even if it'd gone down in flames.

Which is why Mac had just left, instead. 

There's tears in those blue eyes now. "He must have been so scared. I must be, too."

"Becky-"

"I'm not talking to you right now."

Maybe the real Becky would have; but all of his guilt and loneliness has to focus somewhere. She turns away from him, while he reads the rest of the letter. 

_At least when Murdoc cut me off from everyone, he gave me the whole world in exchange. And when I got back in touch with Becky anyway, he never tried to stop me._

_So if you like it so much here, you can stay._

_Maybe I'll come back one of these days, to see how you're getting on._

He can't tell if that's a threat or a promise, but it almost doesn't matter. An airplane is like a good con; it takes a lot of money to make even more. He'll never get another one now.

And if he's lost Mac's love, along with his plane and home and everything else, what's even the point of leaving?

************

"I need a goal. Something to aim at," he explains, while puffing his way down to the lake. Becky keeps up with him at an easy jog. Course, she could sprint way ahead of him. But she's sweet and doesn't.

In the best of all possible worlds, there is no way he'd voluntarily put this much effort into exercise; but their living arrangements had sorta forced the issue. There might have come a time when running for his life became all too literal. 

(Though of course both assassins had promised that'd never happen. Murdoc, typically while petting him. Guy had always tended to treat him like a lost kitten in needs of treats and cuddles, and there'd been times he'd found that annoyingly patronising, but...well. He dreams about Mac fucking him again; but it's the ones where Murdoc's comforting him with food and amused acceptance of his faults, that leave him feeling better when he wakes up.)

Not that he'd ever run as much as he should have, before this summer. But now that Mac's forced him into the routine, he might as well stick with it.

There's this advantage to talking with someone who isn't there; he can carry on a conversation without further winding himself.

"I want to forget all about everything, and lucky for me I've got some pills that'll do that. Only I'm not Mac and won't be able to just sleepwalk my way through everything, so I have to get things fixed up first. Clean up the cabin, stock up enough wood to last me. Finish writing this reminder list for myself, so I know what's going on. Figure out whether I tell myself to keep taking the pills or not."

"You sure this is the most sensible thing you could be doing, right now?"

"Becky, since when has sensible ever been on my list of priorities?"

**************

He makes friends with the guy who owns the gas station down the way, mostly because he's the only other person within reasonable walking distance. All the way to town is not reasonable.

Dell sells gas, and compasses, and sewing needles and a lot of other random stuff that comes in useful for bewildered campers and one very lost Texan. Also crunchy peppermint chalks, pink and tasting a little medicinal, which are sweet enough for an indulgence without making him want to eat a whole bag's worth in one go. They chat about sports, mostly. Dell is a big hockey aficionado, funnily enough.

(He's never really seen the point of sports; but after years of being Mac's best friend, he can fake his way through the conversations. Even if he does sometimes catch himself thinking that Becky's a better conversant.)

"I like this guy," she says, poking curiously at the cracker barrel. "Reminds me of Harry, you know? Independent."

"Your grandpa Harry is good at wilderness stuff. I'm really not."

"Unc might have forgiven you by now.

"Doubt it." He's given himself a solid month to get this right, and it feels simultaneously like an eternity and no time at all. He can't imagine Mac being any less emotional. 

(If it's between that or being forgotten about altogether, he'd much rather think that MacGyver still lays awake nights furious with him.)

"Who you talkin' to?" Dell demands. 

"This," Jack says, tapping his head. "Why I'm out here at all, you know?"

Dell regards him with an I've-seen-it-all-before expression. "Fair 'nuff. You're in the right place for it."

True. 

He briefly considered what would have happened if he'd made that slip-up back in Mission City; and immediately abandons that line of thought as being needlessly frightening.

**************

_Hey,_

_your name’s Jack Dalton, you were very much in love until the guy dumped you. Though he wasn’t all bad; he left you with some amnesia pills that’ll let you forget all about him._

_I’ve taken one; the effects will last a week. If you’re feeling good about how things are shaking out by next Saturday, go ahead and take another one. Trust me, you were feeling pretty rotten without them._

_Stuff you should know- you’re in Colorado, you’re broke (don’t spend any money), you live alone in this cabin and don’t get out much. Or at all, really. The stove has a tendency to go out if you look at it the wrong way; always make sure the door’s firmly shut before you try cooking anything. The woodshed has enough wood to last you the week, though you’ll have to carry it yourself. (Sorry, I just got really tired.)_

_Go for a run in the morning every day, about an hour after breakfast (there’s a map on the other side of this, showing the way to the lake). Trust me, that’s important. That generator in the corner needs to be cranked up before sunset every day, or else there’s no electricity for the light and the slow cooker won't work (and you need the slow cooker, that's mostly what you've living on these days). I usually give it about forty-five minutes. Don’t touch the supplies on the bottom shelf; I’ve rationed out a week’s worth so you don’t have to think about it._

_Try to have more fun then I did, huh?_

So what, he's some kind of anti-social hermit with a broken heart and a mania for bare-bones wilderness living? 

Naturally he can't remember ever being this terrified before; but he's prepared to lay even money this'll be the worst week of his life. 

(When he does get his memory back, he has to admit it was.)

**************

"You know what the worst thing was? I didn't even have you to talk to."

"I am not a reasonable substitute for an active social life," Becky says, sounding very much like her psychologist mom. She clicks her tongue at him.

"Still better than nothing," he says, entering Dell's shop. 

"Been wondering where you were. You missed coming in last week."

"Had something on," Jack says. Leaves it at that. 

They spend a couple of hours listening to the game together, on Dell's cheap radio; and he finds an extra bag of peppermint chalk in his supplies when he gets home.

"See. Now I couldn't have done that."

"Point."

**************

Come October, he drives into town to pick up his DXS cheque and finds it isn't there. Somebody must have noticed that he's failed to live up to his end of the bargain. 

Probably because Mac's back in action again. 

He spends all the cash he's got left on supplies and a fresh supply of pens; and spends the next week hardly touching the former and wearing out the latter. Those chemistry books are still here. Balancing equations doesn't make a damned bit of sense to him, but it's a distraction, and something he can do without getting out of his bedroll.

It's the kind of thing his Mac would have done. Probably did do, to avoid having to think about things.

Eight days in, he wakes up to find Becky perched on one of the log seats. Shaking her head at him. 

"Hey. Wanna make breakfast?"

"...'kay."

She likes pancakes; but his are terrible and in no way live up to her uncle's. "What about a cheese omelette? Might even be some mushrooms, in that outcropping up the hill."

Becky wrinkles her nose. "Are you sure you really want to risk it? Wild mushrooms?"

"I think I'm safe, if I stick to the kind Mac showed me." _And if I'm not, I don't really care anyway._

They walk outside into the sunlight. It'd be bitterly cold, if he didn't have his flight jacket. Becky's got her wool coat to keep her warm. 

"I killed a guy for no particular reason," Jack tells her. "Because he was there, that's it, and I was trying to show off."

"Is that what this is about?" Becky asks, as he picks the mushrooms. Little white puffballs, round and yielding. "Trying to repent for your own sins?"

"Sure. Maybe I deserve this- I don't even know what Pete Thornton was like. Maybe he was a nice guy. I'm never gonna know."

"You thought he was threatening my uncle."

"I thought he'd probably imprison your uncle. I did figure he might kill Murdoc." When did they get back to the house, when did he pick up this frying pan? He pours a little oil in it and starts stirring up the eggs.

"So you killed him to save Murdoc. That's something."

"No, it isn't. I mean-" He cuts a slice off the block of cheese, throws it in the pan whole- dumb way to cook, just like him- "I might have done that now, after getting to know Murdoc, but I had no way of knowing as much at the time."

"You knew that my uncle had stayed with him voluntarily, for months."

"Becky, your uncle is not exactly the best judge of character. Look at the Ellen thing. Look at-"

and he's starting to laugh now, amused like he hasn't been since Mac left. "Look at me! One completely screwed-up, grounded pilot who can't even come up with one single reason why he shouldn't just give up and roll over dead!"

The breakfast's done. He offers it to Becky, who gives him a weird look. 

"You've just got a perverse streak, is what," she says, as he digs in with appetite. "That's a reason. It'd spoil the punchline if you gave up and died now."

His head's starting to clear. "And it'd probably upset you to hear about, one of these days. The real you, I mean."

Becky shrugs. "There is that as well."

**************

A lady hiker shows up, rather extremely lost. He gives her directions back to civilisation, and a warm place to spend the night. She compliments the slightly crooked coffee table he's built, and leaves him some packets of hot chocolate. 

(They sleep together, naturally.)

There is absolutely nothing more to it than that; but it does a hell of a lot to cheer him up.

**************

Weirdly, nobody from the DXS shows up to order him away. Maybe they don't like the place either. 

He's come around to hating the cabin with a passion that borders on love, some days: the perfect expression of an inanely co-dependent relationship. It's freezing and inhospitable and sulky; he swears at it and tries to hammer it into better behaviour, it makes promises and then falls apart on him again. 

"I think I preferred it when you were just talking to me," Becky says. 

"I can't shout at you, even a fictional you. This cabin, on the other hand, I can yell at all I want. What's it gonna do to me?"

First frost, the pipes explode.

_oh god oh god there’s water all over the floor, everything’s soaked, what do I do-_

“Calm down,” Becky orders him.

He manages to get the water turned off, spends the rest of the day coping. Getting the stove cranked up hot to dry out his blankets, putting the soaked wood aside to dry out. Cleaning the floor off, since it’s soaking wet anyway. 

Fixing the pipes is beyond him; but after some cautious experimentation, he determines it’s the output that’s at fault rather than the input. If he’s careful not to use water unnecessarily, leaves a container beneath the sink to catch any accidental overflow, he can probably get by.

It’s not a fix like Mac would do. It isn’t even a fix at all. Best he can manage, though. 

“Jack, you’re getting in over your head.”

“Probably. You got any ideas for how to make a bucket?”

**********

“What’d you do for Thanksgiving?” Dell asks him. 

He blinks. “Did I miss it?”

“Guess you must have done. It was last Thursday, I flew out to Pennsylvania. Saw my grandkids.”

“...oh. Slept through the whole thing, I guess.”

“Wish I could have done that. My son-in-law couldn’t even wait until we’d carved the turkey to start talking politics.”

Just as well. He didn’t have the money to do anything for it anyway.

********** 

Mac’s a born survivalist. Plump him in the middle of the bush, or Alaska or the Sahara or anywhere else, he’d be living off the fat of the land inside of a fortnight and sitting pretty.

But he sure can’t do that, so he ends up swapping the sedan for store credit with Dell. That’ll see him through a couple of years, less if he has to buy some firewood. He’d rather not do that. 

(The stove’s eating up a scary amount of wood now; he’s losing entire days just to ensuring the cabin stays warm, chopping and gathering and trying not to throw his back out with all the bending down he has to do. Too bad Becky can’t help. But at least it’s something to do, enough to keep him busy.)

“So your name’s Scott, huh?” Dell says, reading off the car registration. 

“Oh, yeah. Never liked it much.”

“Won’t use it then.”

They seal the deal over a couple of hamburgers, which Dell cooks himself. Greasy and fatty and the smell revolts Jack a little bit, after spending months vegetarian. (He’d stuck to that even after Mac left. Perversity. Also the lack of a refrigerator.) But no way is he turning down free food; and enough ketchup can fix pretty much anything.

“What happens when you run out of store credit?” Becky asks as he hikes home, in a contentedly well-fed fugue. 

“Dunno. A lot can happen between then and now, I’ll think about it when I get there.”

She can doubt all she likes; but he’s starting to wonder if he might just survive this. 

“You worry about it so I don’t have to, huh?”

“...if that’s what you need me to do. Sure.”

********** 

Dell gives him a cheap tape deck, and a couple of dusty Beatles cassettes, and promises to order some Grateful Dead tapes for him. It’s like bottled heaven, having something to listen to in the cabin; he suspects he’ll be playing these to death. And liking it, too. 

There’s a radio setting as well, and he doubts at first that it’ll receive anything; but he fiddles around, tries a few different frequencies. 

He’s sitting by the stove that night, when it happens. Properly warm, busy sharpening his SAK (still Becky’s really, and maybe that’s what started him imagining her in the first place). About as happy as he gets, these days. 

And an advert comes on, about an airplane rally in Denver - and his heart clenches and out of the blue he’s curled up in a ball and sobbing himself sick. Blue skies and the hot scent of engine oil and the memory of his cute little Cessna, all the thoughts he’s been forcing out of his mind for months and hitting hard now that they’re back. 

No. 

No, he can’t do this. For as long as he needs to, sure; but not for the rest of his life. 

“But you’ve just got your life sorted out now.”

“Becky, I’ve gotta get back in the air. I have to. Think of a way for me to do it.” 

She looks almost distraught. “How’d you expect me to know how she’d think?”

**********

There’s really only one way to do it. Legally, the plane back at the ranch is still in his name. 

So if it’s still there (big if, unless Murdoc continued practicing). If he can get into it, if there’s any fuel left, if he can get hold of some cash to pay for the thousand and one expenses that go into running light aircraft, maybe he can have his dream back. 

And then...well, then what?

God knows. 

It’s December. This January then, when he’s sure Becky’s back in Los Angeles.

After all, it’d really spoil her day if her uncle ended up having to shoot a trespasser. 

**********

“It’s Christmas. You ought to be doing something.”

“Like what? Dell’s in Pennsylvania, I don’t know anybody else...besides, I am doing something.“

Looking over maps, for a long bus ride. It’ll take ages. He’ll have to go back to Dell and ask for a little cash out of that deal after all, for fares and hamburger money and things. Maybe some extra for airplane repairs, if his sweetheart’s been neglected. 

Shouldn’t be too difficult, since Dell will still be coming out well ahead- and dammit, he’s Jack Dalton. Sweet, silver-tongued Jack with a knack for talking people into stupid bargains, this’ll be a piece of cake. 

After he’s closed up this cabin properly. At least it’ll be nicer for the next unfortunate to get stranded here, now there’s supplies and soft cushions and a few improvements like that. 

Somebody knocks at the door. 

_Mac!_

He trips over his own feet running, crashes to the floor. Remembers he hasn’t locked it anyway. 

“Come in!”

“This looks painful,” Murdoc comments, as he shuts the door tightly behind him. 

“I’m fine. Ow, but I’ll be up in a second-”

“Not that,” Murdoc says, waving aside his distress dismissively. “I mean this place. This miserable, cold, unappealing disaster area of a cabin that MacGyver’s forced on you.”

Somebody else might be more house-proud. He’s not. “Yeah, I know that already. What’s your point?”

Murdoc drops down next to him, runs a hand down his back with casual intimacy. “I’ve come to take you home. Assuming you wish to.”

“I- I can? Mac’s forgiven me?”

“Ah. No. He has not, he remains thoroughly upset with you, and there was a rather awkward discussion over Christmas breakfast when his niece called him out on the series of lies he’s been telling us. She insisted that you wouldn’t have thought of leaving for good without your treasured airplane.”

“Uncle Mac would never lie to me,” Becky says, frowning.

“Becky, you wouldn’t lie to him. But he might, these days.”

(At least he remembers not to say it out loud.)

“I don’t get it. Lying about what?”

“That you’d left him voluntarily. That you’d insisted on going, because you weren’t able to live with an assassin any longer, and wanted no more to do with any of us. I gather that wasn’t the case.”

“Not really. No. It’s been lonely and I’ve missed everyone, but Mac said for me to stay here. So I’ve stayed here.”

He’s starting to feel sick. Why’d he let Mac do this to him? On the strength of a single line in a breakup letter, he’s spent months and months trapped here, terrified of leaving-

“Dalton,” Murdoc says, in a calm, thoroughly English accent (the one he uses to talk to Ashton, that’s probably the most his own). “That is quite ridiculously brave of you. But you won’t have to do it anymore, I’ll promise you that.”

They’re on the floor already; it’s easy to slip into Murdoc’s embrace, craving safety and cosy heat (how did that happen? He was always the warmest one of their trio). Peaceful. Like he hasn’t felt- well, since Mac walked out. 

“It hasn’t been a good autumn for him. He’s taking too many risks, he’s angry and perpetually lashing out and not cool-headed enough to handle the jobs properly. It’s evident that he needs you back in his life. I’m not enough.”

“He’s an assassin who broke up with me. Maybe I’m just a little bit scared of going back?”

“Forget about that. You know I’m more capable than he is,” Murdoc says, and Jack finds himself both a little freaked and turned on by the sensuality all but dripping off that smooth voice. “If he wants to push us away, then I’m certainly not keeping him on for business reasons, not in his state. But you- you were never about the business, not in the least, you were always love. Because of him at first, but now...you know, for months I’ve been finding myself a prey to an absurd instinct with no outlet. Domesticity. Wishing you were home, so I could reassure myself on your continued well-being.”

“I was right. You feel the same way about me that you would for a stray cat.”

“Nonsense. I couldn’t care less about a randomly selected kitten, it could stay mewling in the street until doomsday. Whereas, I...I love you,” Murdoc says, sounding very nearly puzzled, “In as unselfish a fashion as I’m capable of, I believe. It would simply make me happier if you were home, flying your airplanes and making an adorable nuisance of yourself. Besides. I’ve quite missed our flying lessons.”

As much as he loves the man still, MacGyver is never gonna say anything that sexy. 

The two hours he spends piloting them back home is just about the best trip he’s ever had. 

*************

It’s very disconcerting seeing Becky in the flesh; but Jack’s sure he’ll get used to it again. Eventually. 

She hugs him on the sofa, while Murdoc gets on preparing Christmas dinner (neither of them are being allowed near the stove right now, there’s arcane rituals for him to deal with or something). Mac’s off in his workshop, sulking. 

“Sheesh, you’re so thin. What happened to my cuddly Jack?”

“Not a lot of money. Or appetite, I guess.”

“That’s horrible,” Becky says, squeezing him. “You’re gonna need a lot of feeding up...I still can’t believe Unc just left you there, all alone. You must have been so lonely.”

“Coulda been worse. I guess you got me through it, really.”

Her brow puckers. (Funny thing, seeing all those real-life mannerisms he’d forgotten.) “How?”

“Promise not to laugh?”

He pulls a journal out of his rucksack. The long ongoing letter to her, that’s kept him going for months. “Spent a lot of time talking to you. Sometimes you talked back.”

“Huh,” she says, flipping through pages. She giggles frequently; he’d put in a lot of jokes. “You shoulda just written me, in LA. We could have gotten this cleared up way sooner.”

He winces. “Between me and your uncle? Becky, I know who you’d pick in that showdown.”

“It’s not going to be a matter of picking,” Becky says, quite calmly. “He needs you around, and I’m going to convince him of that. By leaving him out of Christmas, if necessary.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t.”

“I would. I’ve told him he either apologies to you, or he can spend the rest of the day by himself.”

“Maybe he’ll do that.”

“He won’t. You watch.”

Mac doesn’t come out for Christmas dinner. Or the presents (Jack’s rather pleased with himself for his yearly custom of always doing the Christmas shopping during January sales; it takes Murdoc off-guard, and Becky’s tickled to death). Or the eggnog. 

After that, when they’re on the sofa and watching some banal Christmas telly, he finally shows up. Looking thoroughly ashamed of himself. 

“I spent just today by myself, and it was awful, and I can’t believe I put you through that for months,” Mac says, all in a rush. “And if you were me, I’d never forgive me.”

“So it’s a good thing I’m not, isn’t it?”

Probably nobody halfway sane ought to jump up and give him a hug like nothing’s happened. 

But then, Jack Dalton’s never pretended to be sensible. 

*************

Dell isn’t much surprised, by the postcard waiting for him when he gets home. 

_Hey. Scott here. I went home for Christmas, and it turns out they’re letting me stay. Thanks for everything. Maybe I’ll drop by again next summer, huh?_

“Crazy guy,” Dell says aloud. “Crazy. Still. Nice that he’s happy…”


	4. a question of timing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got very enthusiastic about Tanista's "Those Left Behind". 
> 
> So, of course I had to write an AU of it. In which Mac's horrendous patent lawsuit settles before the car crash, instead of after- and that makes all the difference.

It can't count as eavesdropping, when you're lying right on the sofa in plain sight; but Becky gets the idea that her parents are too preoccupied to even notice she's there. (Which is not like them at all.) Any other time, she'd probably cough or something-

but they're talking about her uncle in low tones, and she wants to hear this.

"So Angus is selling the shop? Good for him," her dad says heartily.

"That's Mac to you," her mother says. "I'm the only one who gets to call him by his first name...no, but I wonder how much he isn't telling us. That coffee shop has been in the family all of fifty years, the lawsuit must have completely wiped him out. Or worse."

"Feeling sentimental?"

"Maybe a little, now I know it's going. No. No, to be honest I'm not. Mother always loved it so much more than either of us did."

"Glad to hear it. I'd hate to think that we'd spent all these years out here by mistake."

"As if! I'd never have wanted to raise our children in Mission City...but I think we ought to invite Angus to stay here, once he's settled everything. So he can have a few months in his life just to rest, and get his bearings."

"Well, Chris' room will be free this summer. And I'm sure Becky will enjoy seeing her uncle again- Becky, hello. We didn't see you there."

"Is Uncle Mac gonna be all right?" she asks, voice quivering.

"Of course he is," her mother promises. "Trust me, Becky, your uncle has a fine instinct for survival. Why, he'd probably outlast the zombie apocalypse."

Their reassurances comfort her; but still. Can't be too careful.

Next day, she spends a significant chunk of her modest savings to mail him a care package. A couple of light linen handkerchiefs, just right for summer. Dried apple jerky, a new book of F&SF science essays. And a long, chatty letter, in which she writes about anything and everything fun and flippant that comes to her mind. The best she can do, on short notice- and his cheerful reply assures her that it's just what he needed.

Becky's just starting to think about sending another along, when the crash happens.

***********

He doesn't have time for tears, right now. There's business to attend to.

"Penny, please," Mac implores. "I've got to have the shop back. How am I supposed to look after Becky without a steady income?"

"This wasn't my idea," Penny points out, a little more dispiritedly than has ever been her wont. "You did such a good job of convincing my aunt that I'd learn responsibility and respect for good hard work and everything, if I started running the coffee shop. I think I'm stuck with it."

She waves her hands helplessly at the coffee shop's disarray. A month of her ownership has not yet reduced it to smoking rubble, but already it's impossible to find anything, and she seems to be incapable of making so much as a simple coffee without adding milk or glitter or three shots of espresso by mistake. He might have hated running the place; but seeing it in this state makes him wince.

"I'm sorry, Mac, I'm really very sorry, but you know what Aunt Betty's like! Besides. She wouldn't even think about it, unless you refunded all her money back."

"And I just don't have it, not now I've paid off my debts and bought a round trip plane ticket. What if I promised to pay it back by installments? Or maybe I could get a credit card-"

"Oh, you don't want to do that. Aunt Betty hates credit cards. She says that anybody fool enough to use them...well, let's just say, you'd never get the shop back that way."

"Becky's my niece. The only blood relative I've got left...and I won't be able to adopt her."

He looks, Penny reflects, rather the way she'd felt when her Aunt Betty had announced she was getting a whole coffee shop dropped on her. Instead of something she actually wanted, like a fashionable new wardrobe and the keys to a shiny Hollywood pad.

(Of course, she's not going to say that it's fair punishment for Mac doing this to her, because losing your family must be lots worse than spending who knows how long stuck in a coffee shop- or it's supposed to be, anyway. She's never cried any tears over leaving Boston behind, come to think of it.)

"You must have had some kind of plan," she adds helpfully. "For what you were going to do next. Why can't you fit Becky into it somehow?

Mac groans. "Calling it a plan would be overselling it by a couple orders of magnitude. Squatting in Jack’s trailer until he gets out of jail, and then blagging my way along as a mechanic when he moves to Texas and starts up Dalton Fly-By-Night. Look- d'you think the three of us can pull it off? Maybe?”

Penny considers. (It is slightly alarming, being asked for a serious opinion. People don’t ask her for serious opinions about anything; that’s what her aunt’s for. Maybe she’s a little fed up with her beloved Aunt Betty and people in general, just now.)

"Well, Becky gets motion sickness, and she has a whole library of books at home from what you've told me, which are awfully heavy and won't fit in a plane. And she's quiet and I'm not sure that she always likes to meet new people, which isn't a good idea if you're going to be moving her out of her hometown. Besides, what about her schooling? How will she get into college without a high school degree?"

"...it's not going to work, is it? Only I thought...maybe I wasn’t thinking at all."

"And Jack Dalton is not at all what you'd call a good influence," Penny adds. "I used to think he was awfully funny, but a whole year in prison- and to think he asked me on a date once!"

"Seriously?"

"Well, no. Somebody bet him at one of my parties, everybody had been drinking a lot." (She takes her parties seriously; Mission City relies on them for stress management.) "But that just shows what kind of guy he is. And a repeat offender, now really!"

Mac starts to giggle. "You make it sound like Jack's some hardened criminal- oh, god, an hour ago I was told my sister died, and now I'm laughing. Penny. I think I'm losing it."

"Why don’t you leave for the airport now? Can't be too careful. I remember one time, I was three hours early-"

He'd been intending to put off going, because that involves thinking about what he's going to tell Becky, and that is not a thing he wants to do. Not in the least.

But it gets him out of listening to Penny Parker blather any longer.

And out of that coffee shop, which is always a plus. 

***********

There comes a point, after the funerals and the visit from the social worker and the lawyer, and more grieving than either of them can stand, when she and her uncle really can't put off the conversation any longer. As hard as both of them are trying. 

She's sewing, in tight tiny stitches that require an excess of concentration. He's studying a tv western as though he expects to be interrogated on it, while methodically eating through the last of the fruit jerky. Everybody else in the family had always liked it better than she had.

(For one preposterous moment this morning, Becky had seen him on the doorstep and thought she was seeing a ghost. If they're all dead, why wouldn’t he be too?)

But no: he’s warm and present and very much here. She wants to cling to him, with all the love that hasn’t any other outlet now.

He brushes sticky residue off his hands, glances over at her. “Becky...I don’t know how I’m going to tell you this.”

“You can’t take me home,” she says, without quavering. “You’ve sold the shop, you’ve spent a lot of money you don’t have coming out here, and you couldn’t afford to take me home even if there was a home for me to go to.”

“Becky! It isn’t- I mean, I don’t want you to think I’ll be homeless or anything. It- it’s complicated.”

They’ve cried out all those tears over their family, the first night and that unexpected breakdown. These tears are for her future.

These tears, that she won’t be crying. “It’s okay, Unc. Mrs Doyle’s very nice, I’m sure she’ll make sure I’ll go somewhere good.”

There’s a touch of hope in his voice. “So...you’ve made up your mind already? You want to go into foster care, instead of coming back to Minnesota with me? Because I want this to be your choice. God knows, it’s not much of a one...but you deserve that much."

The commercial break ends; he goes back to watching cowboys waggling six-shooters at each other. They're both rather grateful for the respite.

"Living with Jack and me in a trailer down in Texas," he continues, a few minutes later. "Hoping to hell that he doesn’t crash, and we somehow make enough to keep his plane running. Or you can stay here, in a safe stable environment. Save all your parents’ money for college, because I’ll never be able to give that to you. A degree like the one I should have had.”

“I could save it and come with you anyway.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that. Airplanes aren’t cheap, you’re soft-hearted...say he ends up crashing it after six months, and we have your college fund just sitting there. You know what’s going to happen? Jack’s going to beg me on bent knee to give him another chance, and I’ll let him, and then you don’t get your degree either. You end up stuck on another dead-end route to nowhere like I did.”

She’s never heard him talk about his missed opportunity like this before. Not so strenuously. Not so desperately.

(He’s been grieving by slow inches, for years now. He needs to move on with his life; and she’ll only hold him back from that.)

“It sounds like we’ve both decided,” Becky says, putting aside her sewing. Twists around on the sofa, curls her two small hands around one of his. “And- and, it’s not like you’ll be completely out of my life, right? We can still write to each other.”

“Absolutely. Every week, I promise, and I'll make Jack take us out here for a visit, before we head south. And you tell me if anything goes wrong, okay? If you don’t like your foster family, or anything- I promise you, Becky, I’ll come and get you right away.”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to do that.”

“But I will. Trust me.”

“I would,” Becky says, very tired. “Only that’s what my parents said too.”

It’s quiet after that. Until one of the cowboys on screen finally stops yapping and just shoots his opponent already. She doesn't like the violence; but she can, sorta, see the appeal of some predictability in life. 

(And if she's thinking like that, then hanging out with Jack Dalton is definitely not what she needs right now. 

Too bad he's not here, though. She could sure use a good laugh.)

***********

Unc expects that she's going to stay in town; but when she stops to think about it, why should she? Never been that popular at school anyway, and it’ll be even worse with everybody offering perpetual condolences for what’s left of her childhood. No, a fresh start would be better. Somewhere else.

Besides, she’s always liked the sea.

“I think you’ll get along with Elaine,” Mrs Doyle promises her. “She says she’s on the lookout for someone quiet, with a sense of humor. Somebody who doesn’t care much for mixing with the crowd.”

Ouch!

But she’s in for it now. Maybe this’ll work out.

Becky almost gasps, when Elaine enters- it’s almost like having her own grandmother back again. Grey and wildly wispy hair, and a smile permanently engraved into her worn features.

“I’ll be honest, I’m mostly in this for the cash,” she says. “And somebody who won’t talk back to me, when I tell her to do her own dishes.”

Mrs Doyle looks positively scandalised.

Becky’s starting to like her already.

***********

_ Dear Becky, _

_ first off, please don’t worry about so much about me. I’ve got some proceeds from the shop sale to tide me over. And somewhere to stay. _

“Albeit,” Mac says aloud, pulling his new patterned quilt over him (Becky had insisted, and she’s glad she had), “somewhere that manages to be draughty in May, for heaven’s sake. This trailer’s no place for a princess.”

He briefly toys with the idea of trying to raise Becky here: him and her and Jack in this cramped, dirty little space; and shudders. This Elaine person seems to be a decent sort, who'll make sure that his niece always gets regular meals and sewing material and book money. That's more than he could promise. Becky's better off where she is.

Okay, so if they really had to try they'd do their best. Jack's such a sweetheart, he'd probably be game for it. 

Tuesday night, he's definitely got Jack on the brain. The first Tuesday since getting back from Oregon: he might have gone earlier, if not for this feeling that if he'd snuck in on the wrong day, somebody would have caught him. Sheer superstition, naturally. But then, nervous people oughtn't to be breaking into prisons anyway.

Impulsively, MacGyver starts scribbling down one of the more printable stories about their smuggling goings-on. An incident about a guard who, in an unexpected fit of zeal, decided to park in front of Dalton's cell all night...and would undoubtedly have found him in the morning, if the other prisoners hadn't staged an entire impromptu barbecue to distract the guy. It's a dumb thing to mail her, totally illegal and making no bones about what kind of deranged lifestyle he's going to be living with Jack, which ought to both amuse Becky while making her feel better about not being in on it.

(Or come to think of it, envious, if she's like him. But Allison must have brought her up better than that.)

After finishing that off, he starts getting together this week’s collection of contraband. Chocolate orders, dirty magazines, a few vials of vodka and one of pear brandy (Jack's cellmate Dennis cultivates weird tastes). Unconscionably starts whistling, to his own chagrin. 

Nobody looking at him now would guess that he's supposed to be in mourning. But the trip's only whetted his appetite for travel- and in only a couple of months, the day that Jack's released, they're leaving Mission City for good.

"Doin' the same thing you did, sis. Only a couple of years late."

And who knows? Maybe he and Jack will strike it rich after all, maybe he’ll be able to get his niece back. It could happen.

Anything can, now.

***********

He can, Jack reflects, forgive and understand almost everything Mac's done tonight. Such as almost putting both their necks on the line by arriving too early (okay, nothing had come of it, but still!) Attracting attention by sobbing a bit, while explaining about his sister's family- well, that's fair enough, and at least he'd tried to do it quietly. Completely forgotten about the razor blades he was supposed to bring.

But Becky- no. That is not right.

_ Mac, you can't do that to her! _

He chews the pen cap, and adds a couple more exclamation marks just for emphasis.

_ Believe me, I ought to know. She needs to be with us, plenty of love and support. Not fobbed off on the foster care system like I was. _

_ It won't be like that. Elaine's a nice old duck, Becky says. Likes handicrafts just as much, they're getting on famously. _

_ Course she'd say that, she wouldn't want you to worry. Bet she's miserable. _

_ She wouldn't lie to me. _

_ To reassure you? Sure she would. _

In the half-darkness, he can see MacGyver frowning. Clearly the thought's never crossed that innocent head of his. For a habitual prison-breaker, he's still awfully naive. It's cute, Jack reckons.

_ But the alternative is introducing my niece to the downright criminal life we'll be leading. That can't be right. And the machinery is all in motion now, she's staying put. _

_ Only one reason I'm not walloping you over the head with this notepad. _

_ \- why? _

_ Cos I know you + Becky, and I will just bet this won't last. _

He hopes.

Damn it, he's going to have nightmares about Wisconsin tonight.

***********

_ Dear Uncle Mac, _

_ if you can tell me to stop worrying about you, how about letting me return the favour? You know what Mom the psychologist always said, about letting people grieve at their own pace...besides, I look on these letters to you as somewhere I can get away from being sad and lonely, for a little while. Or at least, somewhere I can be sad about your problems instead. You know she wouldn’t want you to spend all your life broken up about something you couldn’t help. _

_ I’m settling in nicely. We’re in a nice quiet stretch of the coast, I haven’t seen anybody my age yet. So I have plenty of time to read, and sew and everything. There's a dog here, who I help walk in the mornings- he's named 'Dog' but doesn't ever answer to it. Answers to a can opener though. _

_ (I’ve been tempted to try recording a can opener and playing the sound back on a walk, just to see what he’ll do. Of course, I’d bring a dog treat too, to be fair.) _

_ Elaine’s nice enough. She has this fantastic collection of doll’s houses, and we’ve been talking over lots of ideas about her new designs. I’ve made a couple of tiny hook rugs already, it’s a nice distraction. You have to be very meticulous. And that's good for me, right now, keeps me occupied… _

Okay, so she is managing to have a little fun here- and that's more than she was expecting. (Feels sort of disloyal, but she can't forget her dad comforting mom, after her own mother had died- "Allison, you have to move on. For her sake instead of yours, if that makes you feel better...")

But the sleepy seaside town is not a patch on the excitement described in her uncle's letters. And after being brought up in a whirlwind of ideas and old friends visiting from the commune and lots of intellectual conversation, it can't be denied: aside from her trips down to the Pacific, this is way dull.

A glimpse of the boredom that has made her uncle so utterly sick of Mission City, and that's really starting to unnerve her.

***********

_ Dear Becky, _

_ I'll be awful and pass along a piece of homespun Mission City gossip, for once- Penny’s upped sticks and left for LA. The famous Parker perversity, coming out at last. She’d probably have enjoyed the coffee shop as a sideline from her theatre work, if Betty hadn’t forced her into it...well. That’ll teach the old lady a lesson (and good riddance!) _

_ Aside from that, it’s mostly been making plans for when Jack and I leave. Selling off the trailer, heading for pastures new- oh, Becky, don’t hate me for this, but it makes me happy. That I’m getting out at last, that whatever happens next, at least I’ve got control of my own destiny. _

_ That Jack and I are going together. My Jack. My- well, my boyfriend. _

_ I’m smiling just writing that. I can’t wait to say it to him for the first time... _

(He's saving it for when they get to Texas. 

Or Oregon, if it turns out he can't wait that long.)

***********

“Isn’t this the cutest thing?” Becky says, showing the letter to Elaine. "After the divorce- I'm so glad he's found somebody he can really be happy with. It'll work out better this time, I just know it."

“No, it is not,” Elaine says after a moment. “And if he comes to see you flaunting this- this person, I’ll bar the two of them from the house.”

It’s just as well she hasn’t finished unpacking her bags yet. 

She’s out of the house in all of ten minutes.

***********

Wednesday, visiting hours. After a phone call that had rather taken MacGyver off-guard.

“Three weeks, Jack. We didn’t even last three weeks apart.”

“Tolja so,” Jack says, brushing a bit of fluff off his prison uniform. “Three for the road, huh?”

“I guess. We’ll just have to hope that nobody sends police after Becky or anything. I mean, I don’t think they will...”

“So we get to start our smuggling career one jump ahead of the law, already,” Jack says. “Fab! She’ll get into the spirit of this right away.”

“I have,” MacGyver mutters, “a monumentally stupid life. And now I'm getting her into it...sorry I have to cut this short, but I gotta get back to town in time for the bus. Y’know?”

“Sure, sure. Don’t tell her I saw this coming, I wanna say so to her myself.”

“It’s not a contest.”

“No. I just want to see the look on her face when she realises she has a family again.” Jack pauses. “Come to think of it. I bet it’ll look a lot like the one you've got now…”

***********

She catches sight of him from the bus window; and rushes to the front, to jump off into her uncle's waiting arms. The best hug she’s ever had. A promise that she’ll never have to leave him, ever again.

(How did she ever think she'd be able to last for months, when she's been missing him this badly after only three weeks?)

“I can’t believe I let myself leave you. Even if you did tell me to.”

Becky smiles up at him. “I can’t believe I let you.”

"I gotta tell you, it's gonna be a bit rough for a couple months. We're going to have to live in Jack’s trailer, and before he gets out of prison I have to tow it down to Texas. Too bad about my jeep, but I’ll have to sell that and find myself a truck with some serious pulling power...I’m sorry, it means a long car journey for you."

“It can’t possibly be as bad as going from Oregon to Minnesota by bus, though.”

“I was wondering about that- how long were you planning it out?”

“Didn’t, really. I had some maps in my bag, that was enough to get here.”

“Ah. But when, exactly, did you get together the maps?”

Becky blushes. “The day you left. Just in case.”

“Funny, that,” he murmurs, as they head down to the trailer park. “Thing is, I did exactly the same thing…”

***********

_ sixteen months later _

“You know what they say about friends,” Jack says, comfortably gnawing at a piece of cold chicken. “A good one bails you out, but a real one will be right in there with you...

“Aren’t we a little past that point?” MacGyver asks, preoccupied. “Hush. I’m sure I could think up a plan to get out of here, if you’d just stop distracting me. Maybe if I can resonate something...”

“Looks like somebody beat you to it,” Jack says, nodding as Becky comes in with the sheriff. (She’s quite short to pass as a convincing adult; but then, he’d had the same problem at her age; he’s taught her a couple of tricks for this sort of situation.)

“Your niece here has come to bail you out. Now aren’t you ashamed of yourself, letting down a fine young lady like this?”

"Yes," both of them say, simultaneously. To the officer's evident puzzlement.

"Hang on. Which one of you...oh, never mind. You make sure they behave themselves, now," he adds to Becky.

She curtesys, sweetly, and promises they will.

"How'd you scrape up the dough?" Jack asks, as soon as they're out of earshot from the prison. "Please don't say it was the college fund again, Mac'll kill me."

"No. It was weird. There was this guy who said he'd put up all that money, if only- um, it's kinda skivvy, Unc. He wants you to give him a skating lesson. Said he saw you in that Vegas game three weeks ago and has been chasing us down ever since."

"I don't like this," Jack says immediately. "I said that was way too noticeable..."

"But it was the first rink I've seen in ages! I had a great time- and besides, if the guy can afford to drop that much on a hockey coach, he's probably the kind of person we'd like to get to know. Money, parting, fools, et cetera- uh, whoops," he adds, when Becky hastily nudges him and indicates a youngish man rigged out in full cowboy gear. Looks preposterous.

"Wrong side of the law. Wonderfully violent way on the ice. And your own transport- do you know, Angus MacGyver, I believe I'm in love."

"I think you have the wrong guy," MacGyver says immediately. This one's gonna be tricky.

Not that he's worrying or anything. After all, he's got Jack and Becky with him.

Really, who else does he even need in life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That end scene being where I initially thought that "Second Chances" was going to go, lo several eons ago. 
> 
> Glad I got to use that, finally.


	5. sou-sou-west

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...a birthday treat for my co-author. 
> 
> Follow up to the 'verse outlined in the previous chapter, in which Mac and Becky and Jack make it to Texas at long last, and manage to actually enjoy some French toast.
> 
> (If I end up writing any more of these, I'll have to start a whole new fic for 'em or something...)

Planes, it turns out, are surprisingly expensive things to run. 

They're making a fair amount of money, most of it even honestly, but it's all going right back into Jack’s beloved second-hand Cessna. Keeping her fueled, paying for insurance and landing fees and so forth. At least maintenance isn't an expense, MacGyver reflects with a certain satisfaction. He's spent so much time repairing everything in it, that he's blagged himself a mechanic's job at the local airport on the strength of his (questionable, but not yet caught out) expertise in keeping the junker running. Keeps him around his boyfriend's obsession without requiring him to go up in the air too often, which is just about right.

So he's set comfortably; but he can't remember the last time Jack was working this hard, if ever. The pilot's constantly flying or plotting out where to fly next or what they're going to smuggle when they get there. It's the dream of Jack's life, of course; but that's probably the only thing keeping him going lately- too many overnight hauls, not half enough rest, and his usual joie de vivre has mutated into a panicky enthusiasm that's a little unnerving to watch. 

Maybe this is why Jack wasn't ready to leave Minnesota until he had company along, to stop him losing any sense of proportion. Even as is...it's very strange, asking somebody to please not worry so much about his own best beloved niece; but the pilot’s taking his responsibility for her very seriously. Has to be practically tied down these days, before he’ll agree to stop working long enough for sleep and something to eat besides endless peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. (Jack doesn’t even like peanut butter, having had rather too much of the stuff as a foster kid, but it has the merit of being cheap and filling.)

Becky herself, despite everything, has been blossoming. Thrilled with the hot, humid Texas climate, industriously reading her way through her mother’s library and a pile of his old textbooks. Knitting herself plush stockings, looking after the hens (she has Well-Researched Opinions about their proper care and maintenance; they’ve been a good outlet for her ongoing desire to pamper things). Their schedule's a trifle too irregular to enroll her in school, but she's been doing well whenever he tries out a test on her.

She keeps them honest, in every sense except the strictly literal one- either of them would cheerfully lie for her benefit, and in fact they have. The trailer stays mostly tidy, they keep busy and optimistic for her. She trusts in them so unquestioningly, that they sort of have to believe her back. That they'll keep the plane running, that none of them will get too badly sick or injured, that they'll be able to keep living mostly comfortably. 

It's good to have something positive to believe in, after so many years in Mission City. Reckless and scary, but also thrilling...and after years of having to lie about who and what he is, the fact that he can now live freely with his heart's love is inexpressibly wonderful. 

(Becky has developed a rather astute ear for when he and Jack might want the small trailer to themselves, for a while; her phrase is "going out for ice cream". Not actually a euphemism; in this climate, she gets through quite a bit of double chocolate.

Come to think of it, he really ought to have had a conversation about using some of that ice cream money on, say, lunch for Jack, but...she's used to it now, small luxuries and having a little money to spend every week. They don't want to worry her any; it's already miraculous how well she's been coping, with losing her whole family and being torn away from everything she knew. That's hard enough for any kid, surely.)

"My brave little Becky," he murmurs to his niece. He'd never tell her she snores, but she does have a way of occasionally sleep-sighing. It's good. It lets him know she's still breathing. "God, I love you so much. Both of you, come to think of it..."

He rolls himself over a little, studies his lover's small form. Usually, even in sleep, Jack manages to look cheeky and amused; now he's just wan. Definitely somebody in need of a good long Sunday off. 

Too bad that they don't have a proper brunch to go with it; there's half a loaf of Jack's favourite soft white bread, and enough milk and eggs for them to each have two pieces of French toast for breakfast (Posy and Priscilla are laying heroically; they've been thriving out here). Becky can have a piece of steak and the last of yesterday's cornmeal mush to fill her up; it ought to be nice enough when fried in butter. Browned on top, a little crispy...geez, but he's been thinking about food a lot lately. 

Then again, he has been skipping lunch every day for a week. Tomorrow he really has to stop being lazy and send in that food stamps application that Jack’s been asking him to figure out (when hungry enough, the pilot can be utterly shameless). It's sure not something he’d ever have done back in Mission City; but, well...just while they’re finding their feet, Mac tells himself. The flipside to parking their trailer on this gorgeous, isolated stretch of coast is that they haven’t got any neighbours to either help or be helped by. 

"Worth it just so you can have a decent supper, for a change," he says fondly to Jack. "Since we’ll have a little money to spare...I'll make you some ribs, maybe, apple pie soup to follow. Or I guess we could bow to the inevitable and get some bacon, like you always want."

"You had me at bacon," Jack says sleepily. "Aw, Mac, you're a sweetheart. Where'd you hide it?"

"Hide what?"

"The bacon. Where is it?" he asks, very expectantly. 

"Uh...Jack, that's tomorrow. Today we're just doing French toast and lazing around."

"Well, you are. I got a last minute commission yesterday, I gotta be out of here by one." 

"Still got a couple hours, then." He frowns at his lover (Jack’s too comatose to notice). "When will you be back?"

"Oh, it's just a short hop. Midnight or so, I'll bring back some dinner."

"But you promised us. No Sunday work, ever."

"I know," Jack says, a trifle embarrassed. "But there isn't going to be any dinner if I don't, I guess it won't kill me for once in a way."

He's got a point there. "Then you go back to sleep, 'kay? I'll make us some French toast before you go."

"You do make really fantastic French toast," Jack agrees, before taking him at his word and promptly dropping back into slumber. 

MacGyver looks at him with warm, devoted adoration, before carefully setting the alarm and snuggling back into bed. Maybe it's this climate, or maybe it's being around two darlings who can't possibly be described as morning people, but he's developed a curious fondness for sleeping in lately.

So it's not exactly a surprise, when he finds himself joining the other two in sleep too...

****************

Becky wakes first (to her surprise; her brother has always teased her about how much she liked lying-in). Starts up all the little rituals, already so familiar; putting the kettle on, watering the plants. Feeding the chickens. 

Back home, she’d never have been asked to do any of this. Come to think of it, wouldn’t have needed to; not when her family had enjoyed an electric coffee-maker and plenty of Pacific Northwest rain and organic farm-bought eggs. It’s all something her uncle worries about rather too much, how much her standard of living’s dropped since she moved in. Neither he nor Jack will let on exactly how impoverished they are right now, but she knows that they’re struggling. 

“And it just drives me up the wall, is what,” she tells Posy. “I mean, we’re in this together. I burned my bridges with the foster system about as thoroughly as I could...and I’m all of fourteen, down here I’m old enough to get married and own a gun, if I felt like it. I wish they’d trust me a little more.”

Oh, well. She’ll just have to make ‘em trust her. 

Jack’s taught her a thing or two about that. 

****************

"Can somebody have a look for one more egg? Or this French toast is going to be a little dry." 

"Sure thing," Becky offers. 

"I'll help," Jack says immediately. 

Becky looks over, mistrustful. He doesn't sound right. 

He also doesn't look right, even once they've gone outside. The ocean breeze means that there's some relatively fresh air going, but even so, Jack only manages five minutes of poking around before setting down in a sunny patch for some rest and hard breathing.

"Becky, I gotta ask. D'you have five dollars?" 

"Sure. You need to borrow it?"

"That obvious, huh?" Jack mutters. "Yeah. Two pieces of toast is never gonna fill me up...five dollars, I can get a burger and something sugary to drink at the airport diner before I fly out. Don't mention to your unc, he wouldn't want me asking you."

"You're not okay, are you?"

He shrugs. "I'll be fine once I get some food in me. Only I haven't done these last couple days, keep getting these dizzy fits...kinda scary, when I have the plane in the air and start going hazy around the edges."

Becky frowns. "Why didn't you mention?"

"Well, I am mentioning, aren't I? Mac's been so determined not to worry you about a single thing, it's been second-nature for me to go along with it. But I guess survival's first nature," he says, a touch amused now. "And maybe I'm just greedier than your uncle is, but at least I know where my limits are. There's a point when I can't help look after you right, if I'm too out of it to think straight...five bucks is a chunk of change, but it's a whole lot cheaper than crashing."

Makes sense. She digs around in her pyjama pocket, slips a tightly rolled bill out of the lining (a trick Jack had taught her, in case she was ever stranded without anything but the clothes she was wearing. The way they're living these days, who knows?) "Will a twenty do? Sorry I can't make change..."

"You're a good kid," he says gratefully. "I'll pay you back, promise."

"I believe you."

"Don't feel, you know, obligated to," Jack says, with his first proper smile of the day; and she giggles as much from relief as anything. 

**********

"No luck on the egg hunt, huh?"

"Sorry, Unc," Becky says. "Guess you'll have to make do."

"All right." MacGyver's whistling a cheerful tune to himself, as he starts getting the breakfast together. “Suppose I could try mixing in some applesauce, instead- anyone mind apple-flavoured French toast? No? Good.”

They sit and let him get on with it, chatting about Jack’s next commission, while he spends the next few minutes just marvelling at his luck. Everything he ever wanted, within easy reach. His tools, and rumpled bed, and the two people who he loves more than anybody else on earth...a soft wind, the scent of the sea not too far distant. 

Perfect. 

He dishes up the food and feeds everybody; Jack wolfs his down with gusto, Becky with delight. Coffee for the two of them, tea for him.

"I wonder if there wouldn't be an opportunity," Becky says, adding rather a lot of sugar to hers, "to have you making coffee at the airport. I mean, there's not really anywhere to get a good cup around here, is there?"

"Whoa! Becky, no. I'd rather spend the rest of my life in the air than have to make coffee for customers again..."

She looks at him. With a very speculative expression. 

The memory of that look sorta nags at him all day, while he fiddles with a couple of DIY projects and reads some, and takes a long, pleasingly cold shower. By the time they're up to the late afternoon session of tv watching, he's figuring that it's probably guilt. 

"I'm kinda worried about how Jack's getting on, I admit. He's busy working his tail off, while I'm just sittin' around all day lazin'..."

Becky’s amusing herself, cuddling him. "Natural reaction, isn't it? After spending all those years working so hard at the cafe, you deserve the vacation...and besides. Only you could define a day that involved two hours of gardening, another two trying to keep that wreck we call our truck running, and building a new chicken coop lazing." She's not a fan of the pickup he bought to replace their jeep, an opinion he more than concurs with. 

"Oh, the chicken coop's nowhere near done...but it's all been at my own pace. Not like having to fly a plane for hours on end."

"To you that'd be a burden, but he likes it. Besides, I gave him some money to buy lunch, he'll be fine."

He tenses against her. "That isn't right. I'll give Jack a talking-to when he gets home, you see if I don't-"

"Unc. Calm down already, willya? He needed it but bad, I could see that."

"This is exactly the kind of thing I was afraid of," MacGyver says unhappily. "That Jack would end up sucking you into worrying about our problems, just because he doesn't know how to keep his trap shut..."

"He manages to do that perfectly well with people he doesn't trust, you know that," Becky points out. "Unc, I think the whole 'keep me innocent' thing collapsed after you woke me up at two in the morning and told me to put on my high heels for a poker game."

He can't help groaning. "That never oughta have happened. If we'd had any other choice...but losing that game would have meant losing the plane too, we couldn't risk that. Twenty-five percent odds were bad enough, let alone fifty if that financeer had found somebody else to play."

"Worse than that. Face it, Unc, you're not that good at poker."

"And you were good enough to get us off the hook," Mac says, shaking his head. "Honestly, Becky, what kind of life is this for my own sweetheart of a niece?"

"It's a life," Becky says, after a moment. "That's not guaranteed for kids like me, you know, I've seen some pretty nasty reports about foster homes...never mind. Wouldn't want to scare you."

He shivers; she hugs him reassuringly. 

"Besides...I'd feel a lot better if you were letting me in on everything. If I knew exactly what was going on, and what our plans are, n' things."

"Sometimes there isn't a plan. Honestly..." he sighs, reluctant. "Most of the time we're just winging it."

"Then I'd like to know that, too. Maybe I can help think of one when you need."

"Mmm."

"Jack was doing just the same thing, when he was a lot younger than I am."

"Oh, c'mon! Please don't compare me to his Uncle Charlie, I don't think I could stand that."

"Well, why not? He looked after Jack, he loved him. From the sound of it, he was a pretty nice guy if he wasn't trying to scam you."

"And even nicer when he was," Mac says, sighing. "To think I used to be respectable Angus MacGyver, perfectly unremarkable shopkeeper in Mission City-"

"And only occasionally interrupting that brief to go bailing out Jack and smuggling him treats."

"Becky, seriously. You deserve better than this, you know that."

"What I deserve," she murmurs, "went out the window with the car crash. What I want...what I want is to be able to help too. You n' Jack are all I've got left, I want to make sure I'm doing whatever it takes to keep us safe. Will you teach me, Unc?"

It's an awful thing she's asking. 

It's a worse thing that she's going to get it. He hasn't ever been able to say no to his niece, and she knows it way too well. "What are you going to do if I say no?"

"Ask Jack and get educated behind your back."

He snorts. "Okay. Okay...fine. You know why we can't get rid of the pickup? I've rigged it out with a couple of compartments that nobody short of a professional mechanic's gonna find. That way we can stash anything hot in there, if the situation ever calls for it."

She listens, with bright fascinated eyes. "Go on..."

(Lord love a duck, but his niece is unflappable. He's starting to realise just how devoted to him she really is.

To them, come to think of it.)

***********

"Honey, I'm home!"

"I noticed," Mac says wryly. "In this trailer, it's kinda hard not to."

"Yeah. Well, I like saying it." Jack dumps out a grocery bag on the counter, with beans and rice and two packs of bacon. "I think we fix dinner and then I hit the sack, I feel like I could sleep for a week. Too bad I can't."

"Becky was talking to me about that- seriously, Jack, you need to start getting some more rest. Calm down a bit."

"He means we're ganging up on you," Becky says. "Two votes against one- you need looking after or you'll burn out."

"Well, I have to. I mean, somehow I've ended up the breadwinner, and turned responsible, and everything. Dunno how that happened- I mean, we can't afford to turn down jobs."

"That's why Unc's going to start flying with you regularly, instead of just when you drag him into the plane bodily," Becky says. "You need a co-pilot."

"Say what? You're still afraid of heights, last I checked. And hated the idea of leaving Becky here alone."

"I think I'm old enough to fend for myself,” Becky says. "And you need somebody who can take over flying when you're too tired to see straight."

"So I've been nominated, apparently," Mac says. "I mean...honestly, Jack, flying can't be that bad, the way you love it. And I feel ridiculous depending on you so much, too. You know it isn't like me to loll around."

"...but this isn’t really like you, though."

"And it isn't really like you," Mac tells him, caressing him in a way that makes Becky giggle, "to turn respectable family man, but you've managed that somehow for our sakes. More than time for me to return the favour."

"Well, I'm not gonna argue the point," Jack says, with a grin. "All my dreams come true at once. An airplane, my very own co-pilot, all the bacon I can eat...and I gotta admit," he adds to Becky. "You weren't ever in 'em, but I can't imagine what it'd be like without you- oh, please don't cry, I meant it in a good way!"

"Not that kind of crying," Becky says, sniffing a bit but grabbing him in a huge hug. "I'm so...oh, Jack, I guess I'm just so happy is all. We really are going to be okay, aren't we?"

Mac, Jack is well aware, would have said an unconditional yes. 

He's not built like that, is always just too aware of how close disaster can lie and how topsy-turvy life can be, but there's something else he can say. 

"I'll do the best for you I can," he promises. "Always."

"Good enough for me," Becky says, full of contentment. "Unc, where'd you go?"

Mac chuckles. "Putting on some dinner for a peckish niece and boyfriend of mine. You two get started without me, I'll catch up."

"Oh, that's not fair," Becky says. "We’ll help cook, that way we’ll be just in time to fall asleep watching the late movie."

"I'm in for that," Jack agrees. "And don't think you get to be sneaky and steal the first crispy piece, I'm wise to that trick."

"I wouldn't do that," Mac says, sounding puzzled. 

"Really? I will, then."

"Incorrigible, Jack. You really are."

"I think you could do with some other adjectives for him," Becky defends him. "Like loyal. Or hilarious. Or- family."

"Technically, that'd be a noun," Jack says, very prim before he breaks down giggling.

These two. Oh, these two. 

He's so lucky he has them both to love.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Hey diddle diddle" could really only wrap up one way, given that we already know what happens to MacGyver; he and Chuck shoot Jesse, Mac ends up a committed pacifist for life. The end. 
> 
> But that's not the only route my story could have taken. 
> 
> Hence, this...

“This whole country," her father had once told Ellen, "used to be free and open. Where anyone could do just as they pleased, without any interference. Up against the bush, with your neighbors but not beholden to them..."

It's the sentiment that Mission City was founded on; ironic, given the town's main source of income these days. She'd always privately, secretly, wanted to test her mettle against such wilderness. Of course, it's only ever been a dream. Her mother had raised her for this placid Minnesota town, to take pleasure in its quiet, frivolous ways.

And enjoy herself she had, with her fairy-tale marriage and her little shop, until a car crash had broken the enchantment. Turned her head, filled it with fantasies of running away to somewhere darker and lonelier and madder.

It takes Nelson Davies (aesthetic, and consumed with inner fire, filled with a saint's anger and a saint's passion) to tell her that it needn't stay a dream. Her father is in Alaska. Land up there is cheap. Nothing to hold them back, except herself.

Nothing to hold her back, but the home that's served her since childhood.

"Why?" Audrey asks, from sheer despair.

They walk along the muddied lake shore; Ellen keeps up a harsh pace, one her confidant struggles to match. "Why not? Forgiveness, perhaps. Second chances."

"You already gave him one of those. After the church sermon."

"Anybody," Ellen says (dry as her godchild, her namesake) "can be goaded to their breaking point. Under the right circumstances."

"He's no fit protector for your children."

Perhaps she wanted to be talked out of this; and perhaps that comment decides her. "I've run my life for the sake of my family, and my friends, and most particularly my children. Perhaps it's time that I went ahead and lived for myself, for a change?"

Audrey frowns. "Now if you're going to take a selfish view like that, there's no talking to you. The twins mean everything to me, you know that."

 _At least,_ Ellen reflects with serenity, _I'm not going to force show routines and useless Hollywood dreams on my children._

"You're forgetting, I'm Harry Jackson's daughter. Do you think I'm as malleable as all that? Nelson can take them for the autumn, until I've sold the shop."

"For heaven's sake, at least keep them with you! Think of how unhappy they'll be without you!"

"It'll give them all a chance to get used to each other, and I think they need that. Besides. A little suffering's good for the soul, as my father used to say."

"Especially when it's somebody else doing the suffering?" Audrey murmurs. "You know my husband and I are the only people in town who might have a use for your place."

"And that's why I'm counting on you to talk him into it, my dear."

Ellen isn't worried about that. The Yates could use a larger, more comfortable site for their bakery; and the longer she's separated from the children, the more willing Audrey will be to reunite them. Whatever it takes.

And after that?

Points north. Adventure. A frisson of excitement, every time she thinks of it.

And if she knows her children, they'll love that just as much as she does.

***************

It's only because she's sorting through things for the move (it's been long enough now, she can contemplate donating James's clothing to the church bazaar), that Ellen has occasion to notice her gun's gone missing. Harry's, really. An old army revolver, that he left for the family's protection.

It doesn't take long to connect up the dots between the disappearance and her son's slightly guilty behaviour this morning. Angus has never been a particularly good liar, and if she hadn't been distracted she would have noticed something was off.

She storms down to the gang's river hideaway. They weren't aware she knew about the place; or rather, they hadn't been.

They are now. Looking not a little sheepish, too.

"You're grounded for the rest of the summer," she says briskly, unloading the bullets. Where did they find or buy or steal these? Something for her to ask later.

"Spoilsport," Jesse mutters.

"You can say that again," Ellen tells him, without remorse. "I expect all your parents will have their own opinions about this."

"We didn't actually shoot anything," Neil offers.

"I don't see it would have been so bad if we had," Chuck declaims, although he avoids her gaze.

"Sorry, Mom." At least her son looks appropriately ashamed.

Jack Dalton's not here, she notices. Separating her children from their peer groups had been one of her concerns; but then, Allison has never been the sociable sort anyhow. And if this is what Angus is getting up to with the other boys, then a move away from Mission City may be just what he needs.

Come to think of him...

***************

 _Speak to a fool according to his folly._ Or something to that effect. She'll never be as letter-perfect on Biblical lore as Nelson.

Ellen catches Jack next afternoon, when he's going moping down the street. Nobody wants to play with him (well, what else could an out-of-towner expect?) So he's more than willing to accept her invitation into the shop, where she plies him with cake and quizzes him about his future plans.

"So, you don't love Ruth and David enough to stay with them?" she asks, cutting him another helping.

Jack eyes the slice uncertainly (he's on his third), but attacks it with a sort of determined resolution. "Don't get me wrong, they're nice folks. Only my Uncle Charlie- well, he'll be by to collect me one of these days, so of course I'll go with him. They understand that."

"Even though he's a repeat felon."

"I didn't say that," Jack says, scraping icing off the plate. "But so what if he is?"

That settles that. She offers him another tart lemonade; he gulps it down gratefully, yawns. "Honestly- thanks for the cake, but I think I'd better be getting along home now. I'm sorta awfully sleepy."

"You can lie down in one of the booths, if you like. The cafe's never very busy this time of day."

"No. I mean, thanks, but- I gotta get home," Jack protests, a very unfocused look in his eyes. "I mean, you can't sleep just anywhere. Has to be somewhere safe."

"Don't you think this is safe?"

He doesn't reply, just slides off his chair and makes for the door. Actually stumbles outside for a few steps, before fainting away; she picks up the child and carries him back in. Heavy little thing for his size.

"Nelson's right. Those sleeping drugs wouldn't have worked, if you'd confined yourself to a sensible serving," Ellen says aloud. He doesn't even stir.

She'll drive him and Angus out to Nelson's tonight. With any luck, nobody in Mission City will even notice; one child grounded, the other a runaway, there's no reason to suspect anybody will think twice about the double disappearances. Allison can stay after all, to ward off suspicion and help her with the packing.

Drastic measures: but if this is what it'll take to save the pair of them, done it shall be.

She just hopes that Nelson will be able to cope with these two mischief-makers…

*************

"Now, I'm not going to pretend, this is partly a punishment," Mac's mother tells him that night. Two o'clock in the morning, on the highway to Wisconsin; he'd like to sleep after a frenetic stint of packing, but he'd like answers more, and this will be his last chance at them for a while.

"You've been running wild ever since the car crash, and I think a little discipline is just what you need right now. I haven't been there for you like I should have been- and I am sorry for that, Angus, more than you know. But I'm not going to stand by and let you ruin your life- and I can't look after you properly, while I'm distracted by the shop sale. So you can get to know Nelson for a few weeks, while Allison and I settle things up here."

If he'd known how much taking her gun would upset her- if he'd stopped and thought about it, instead of giving way to the gang's entreaties- he'd never have done it.

(If he hadn't had an inkling this might be his last summer in Mission City with them, would he have ever done anything so dumb?)

"How," he'd said, glancing at the unconscious figure in the back, "does Jack fit into it?"

She snorts. "Any child who puts that much imagination into falsehoods needs to be kept in line. You wouldn't believe the lies he was telling me about the life he was living, before his Uncle Charlie found him. And even when he was telling the truth- for heaven's sake, Nelson Davies is a good man, and blood's thicker than water. Jack's deluding himself very badly, if he thinks he'd rather stay with the Forresters. They're not his family."

He's already saying the next sentence, before he's had time to process the implications of that last line. "What about his Uncle Charlie, though?"

"A criminal?" Ellen says, allowing herself a scandalised expression as she swerves past a slow-moving truck. (His mother's a very good driver. Always was better than dad- ouch.) "He's forfeited his right to care for an innocent. Now, I do understand Jack will have some trouble adjusting- so I'm going to be relying on you, Angus, to help him with that. Help him feel comfortable and secure. Show him that he'll have a family again."

The Forresters were doing a perfectly good job at that, Mac thinks, but he keeps that to himself. "Why me? Why not Allison?"

"Don't tell her I said this...but I think the whole family will get on better if Allison isn't around them at first. I never did count on having a psychologist for a daughter. Do you remember how many tests she tried out on you, last winter?"

"Sure. Loads of 'em." All of which he'd gone along with because it'd been his sister's own odd way of grieving. Anyway, they hadn't been that bad.

"I may not know much about adopting a child, but I'd rather we not scare him like that. Either of them. At least, not right away," she says, smiling.

Put that way, he can sort of see her point.

Sort of.

**************

Jack wakes up slowly, the result of something between instinct and practice. Letting sounds wash over him while he drowses, feeling out his surroundings, is usually a smart move. A little extra rest never hurt anybody.

Particularly times like now, when he's trying to figure out why an upstanding pillar of the community like Ellen MacGyver would bother slipping him a mickey. Or rather, trying to think up an explanation that doesn't involve the man she's been seeing all summer, the one he's been working so hard to stay away from- but there's no doubt about it. This is Wisconsin. He's resting flat on a squeaky army cot with an all-too-familiar wheeze. His rucksack's gone missing.

In a sudden panic, he jolts up and looks around. Same whitewashed room all right (maybe the bars on the window look a little rustier), but the place is crammed full of somebody else's stuff. Plus, the somebody else it all belongs to.

Mac waves at him, puts down his book. Hands him a legal pad and a waxy red pencil.

_Hey. Sorry about my mom. You okay?_

Typical Mac terseness, that. _Where's my bag?_

His friend grins and opens a nondescript suitcase, revealing the fraying rucksack. Jack takes it with relief and has a quick rummage. Not that he doesn't trust Mac, but it's just as well to check that everything's there. It is.

_I figured that Nelson might peek in your bag, if he saw it. Seemed safer, this way._

_Good thinking._ The watch he keeps tied to the zip is twenty-four hour military-style, the only working example from one of Uncle Charlie's stupider escapades (while they hadn't quite been run out of town for selling fakes, they had been rather strongly encouraged to leave. Sheriff said the only reason they weren't under arrest was that anybody stupid enough to buy 'em deserved what they got).

So he knows what time it is: fifteen hundred and a half, or just about the same time he'd fallen asleep eating cake yesterday. Geez, what did the woman do to him?

_Still tired._

_Seriously? You've been asleep a whole day!_

_Seriously. What's Nelson doing?_

_Reading in the study. He said for me to get him, when you woke up._

_Well, let him sweat for a few more hours. Back in a tick, I need some water. See if you can figure out how to blow up the window, willya?_

Mac sits back against the wall, fretting as Jack slips out. He'd only broken out the paper and pencil in case his friend was feeling particularly paranoid or insecure. The fact that Jack's taking all these precautions as read and is already plotting an escape plan suggests that they're in serious trouble.

What's the right thing to do here? Somebody's definitely having a disproportionate reaction here. His mom's not stupid, so maybe it's Jack who's bonkers. But then, the fact that the window would actually need to be demolished in order to get out of here, suggest he isn't.

Maybe both are true?

Mac sighs in frustration, and starts checking through the chemistry set he's brought along. Can't hurt to check, anyway...

****************

"I'm going to get him back," Mike says.

"Oh, don't let your father hear you say that," Ruth says, twisting the telegraph in her hands; she's nearly shredded the paper to pulp. "You know how upset he is."

He is, Mike reflects. Quite aside from his own hurt feelings, about the only thing that can rouse her affable salesman of a dad to anger is somebody hurting his fragile wife. Mom isn't coping very well.

"I know he wouldn't have left us, on his own," she persists. "That telegraph's a lie is all."

"You really think so?" Ruth says With dubious hope, but hope for sure. Rereads it for the umpteenth time.

_Sorry, I just couldn't stay any longer. You know me._

_Jack_

"Nelson Davies kidnapped him, I'm sure of it," Mike insists. "And I'm gonna prove it if it's the last thing I do."

Her mother grips her hands, tight. "You know, I never understood before...why you're like you are. Why you had to be so unfeminine. So relentless."

"Why I'm such a disappointment to you," Mike says, very calm. It's lain unspoken between for a long time now; there's no point objecting, as long as she insists on being herself.

"But this must be the reason," Ruth says. "That boyish curiosity, your insatiable thirst for trouble- Mike?"

"Yes, Mom?"

"Do anything you have to, to get him back," her mother says, and kisses her. "I'll help you any way I can. Home just isn't the same without him."

Mike steps out to start her investigations, with a sense of confidence she's never enjoyed before. She's going to make her mother proud.

Gosh, but this is novel.


End file.
